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In my role of business advisor to startups, I often recommend these to increase initial brand identity and market penetration. With the rate of market change today, and the advent of worldwide competitors, you need every strategy you can muster to keep up, and respond quickly to new threats.
Great marketing is required to generate revenue and grow every business, especially new businesses which have no brand recognition nor loyal customer base. I also look for a commensurate portion of the plan describing the specific innovative marketing deliverables, beyond the traditional marketing items.
If you aren’t yet adapting to the market and your customers, you are falling behind. In other words, change in your business has to become the accepted norm, just like it is in your market. Be proactive rather than reactive to market change. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 2/18/2022.
One of the things I’ve learned over my years as a business mentor and investor is that life isn’t fair when it comes to succeeding in business. These authors speak from their own wealth of experience in creating and growing technology startups, marketing, and fundraising. Use friends and mentors with extensive experience to gauge both.
Thus, in my mentoring of potential technical entrepreneurs who have a real passion for their technology, I often recommend that they find a co-founder who can manage the marketing and execution elements of the new venture. If tracking the market and reality checking are not your thing, you may need a partner who can fill that gap.
As a mentor to many business professionals and owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs, I find a wealth of innovative ideas, but often less insight on what it really takes to transform ideas into an income stream that can excite new customers into long-term business success. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 9/16/2022.
During my many years of mentoring professionals and entrepreneurs in business, I more often see people focusing on how to get their ideas heard , than how to promote themselves. Take full advantage of every mentoring and coaching opportunity, and network with peers both inside and outside the company.
I offer here their summary of purposes and inspirations that have motivated existing business leaders, with insights from my own mentoring and coaching experience. I urge you to assess yours, and listen to friends and mentors, to find and highlight a purpose that perhaps you didn’t even see in yourself.
For example, with a strong background in traditional marketing, you may reposition yourself as a digital marketing expert, with a much better opportunity. Launch a personal marketing plan for visibility. Build a personal marketing plan, as you would for a new product, including regular highlight reports, progress, and results.
Yet I find, as a mentor and outside consultant, that many of you focus only on working conditions and compensation as the key factors determining team engagement , health, and productivity. In my experience, a healthy team is a prerequisite for a thriving business, innovation to meet market needs, and high customer loyalty.
Many of you business leaders I work with, and entrepreneurs I mentor, have a great strategy and an innovative solution , but struggle with building and motivating the team necessary to run your business. Spend time coaching and mentoring team members. Help them learn more about your vision and future market goals.
For example, BlackBerry was really the first in the smart mobile phone market, but they never thought beyond their tiny physical keyboard as they added new features. One way to do this is to nurture mentoring relationships with experts in other disciplines, as Bill Gates did with Warren Buffet. Always practice thinking outside the box.
As a mentor to young aspiring entrepreneurs , I often get asked for tips on a strategy to get started. Don’t be shy about networking for advisors with business experience for coaching and mentoring. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 8/24/2022. The ability to pivot quickly is a key to success.
They rarely highlight their marketing and relationship skills , even though, in my experience, these are more often the key to success in business than product skills. In addition to listening, they spent much of their time communicating their vision and marketing themselves to everyone they encountered.
In my role as a mentor, I challenge every business leader to be more open-minded as they face the challenges of change and new competitors entering their space. It’s easy to jump to conclusions and attack the symptoms of a new problem, such as blaming the marketing team for declining sales. Make your creativity worth their efforts.
The result is fewer and fewer new ideas are volunteered by prospective leaders and key team members, and the business suffers from poor customer satisfaction or loss of market share. The challenge is for leaders to really listen to their team and the market, and for every team member to anticipate pushbacks and respond effectively.
In my role as a business mentor and advisor, I now always look for a culture and recommend team roles that nurture collaboration rather than contention, communities rather than silos , and transparent communication at all levels. In this age of world-wide markets, you need all the help you can get to attract loyal customers.
One of the attributes that I often recommend to the business professionals and entrepreneurs I mentor is to always be totally accountable for your actions and ideas. Be available for mentoring and coaching to others. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 11/24/2022. Document plans and progress, with checkpoints.
You can’t find the time for coaching and mentoring. Positive team collaboration is a culture that you must foster to increase productivity and the ability to change with the market. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 1/26/2022. You must never be too busy on daily issues to prepare for and handle these situations.
You need leaders who focus on delivering value to the market and dealing with competitors, addressing customer and competitive needs now and in the long-term. Mentoring and coaching are also important. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 6/10/2022. It’s no secret today that customers are more demanding than ever.
I believe these same mindsets are equally applicable to the entrepreneurs I mentor, and all of you small business leaders, so I offer you my summary of the authors’ conclusions, paraphrased here, with my own insights: Be bold in vision, strategy, and resource allocation. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 3/16/2022.
Your role is to provide this enablement, through listening to their needs, and providing personal coaching and mentoring as required. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 4/5/2022. Jeff Bezos , founder of Amazon, attributes much of his success to building a motivated and enabled team.
You need to realize that the business role, including financials, marketing, personnel, and team building, only grows over time and your creative role is reduced. But the more you get involved with mentoring and training, the less time you have to enjoy the creative process. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 3/22/2022.
How might our next phase of the journey seem brighter, even with more uncertain days for startups and capital markets? And then in the late 90’s money crept in, swept in to town by public markets, instant wealth and an absurd sky-rocketing of valuations based on no reasonable metrics. What happened? People were building.
Thus, over the years of my mentoring and consulting efforts with entrepreneurs, I have a key list of practices that I recommend to everyone starting and growing a business. Don’t make gut decisions based primarily on marketing pitches and hard-sell tactics. Marty Zwilling First published on Inc.com on 3/11/2022.
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