Welcome to October 2021
In this issue:
- New Product Research Tips
- Industry News
- Training and Support
- Client success stories
See you at your next zoom or in-person session!
Ellie & Phil
Our advice is always available to everyone. We are following the NSW health directive, so if you are vaccinated, we can see you in the office, please be prepared to show your proof of vaccination (we will, of course, be taking the appropriate precautions and always QR signing in/out etc). If you are not vaccinated, we can still offer you support or advice, and this will be via Zoom until 2 December and we reach the next step in our roadmap for NSW openings.
We will be continuing our check in’s with clients and keep in touch calls this month. We know many of you continue to value this connection. Running a business can be daunting at the best of times, and Covid has presented many new challenges, Phil and I are both Mental Health First Aid qualified, and are using these skills to support you to ask the right questions to signpost to you support like New Access, which is aimed at small business owners and offers Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to support you in offering practical skills over 6 free sessions. October is Mental Health Month – an annual event to raise awareness of mental health, reduce the stigma and discrimination against people living with mental illness, and promote positive wellbeing in the community is critical. We are doing our part, and remember all our advice and support is strictly confidential. This month we will be attending a networking event to celebrate 21 years of Mental Health First Aiders Support at an online event to celebrate, connect, and build the capacity of MHFAiders . Hosted by the CEO of Mental Health First Aid, Shannon Anderson and Dr Michael Carr-Gregg talking about Self-care in the time of COVID-19, as always we will share our findings and content with you all.
As so many of you are excitingly producing new products or developing new services, we have focused this month’s Newsletter theme on RESEARCH and provided you with tips for your product development.
Following Ellie’s successful ‘Marketing ideas in a lockdown,’ we ask everyone to give us a *****Five star Google review***** so we can reach as many people as possible to offer our advice. Please take five mins and Post a review to our Google profile. Ask here for your own free ideas copy of this presentation, packed with free ideas for you to implement straight away.
INDUSTRY NEWS
Developing New Products and Services – 5 tips!
Hey, Ellie here. Here are a few notes on developing new products and services that I have been sharing with some clients over the past month. I hope you find them useful.
The failure rate for new products and services can be as high as 90% in some sectors. Luckily there are some simple ways to increase the odds your product will avoid the same fate.
1. Identify An Opportunity And Generate A New Idea To Fill It
If nobody wants or needs your product, it is bound to fail. The starting point for all product development should be to analyse the needs of current and potential customers, their levels of satisfaction with what the competition is offering, their consumption habits and the technical possibilities for improving existing products. What’s the unmet need?
2. Measure The Opportunity
Once you’ve gathered information on market trends and your strategic objectives, the next step is to analyse the segment or segments that the product is geared toward and predict future buying habits as much as possible. What’s the potential, is it seasonal, who are you competing with during these periods?
3. Develop The Concept
In this phase, the new product idea is refined to best serve the needs of potential clients and stand out from the competition.
The three golden aims in this phase are to satisfy the client, stand out from the competition, and show the greatest potential for turning a profit.
4. Testing, Testing….
Does your product:
- Offer a series of features that satisfy customer needs?
- Arrive on the market at an opportune time?
- Perform efficiently with regard to development costs?
- Maintain a healthy equilibrium between the cost and the product’s capacity to turn a profit?
5. Position And Launch
With the product designed and studied thoroughly, the next step is to decide on its strategic positioning. How do you want potential customers to perceive the product? This stage needs to take into account economic, but also functional and emotional factors.
When price and features of rival products are similar, differentiation is largely due to the emotional factor. This is at the heart of the relevance of brand image, communication and the so-called intangible attributes of a service or product.
Take Coca-Cola for example. Its advertising strategy has veered away from the beverage’s features, instead of seeking to establish an emotional connection. Its latest campaigns, “Open happiness” and “Taste the feeling” are examples of this.
It’s a competitive world out there. Planning carefully and remembering the human factor can pay dividends when launching new products!
DID YOU KNOW?
Skill up!
To find out about other NORTEC courses on offer click here
To find out about The Australian Small Business Advisory Services (ASBAS) program provides services that help small businesses to make the most of digital tools and offers broader advice specific to your business needs. Northern Region BEC is the ASBAS provider that covers Northern NSW, with offices located in Armidale, Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie. We run an extensive program of high-quality workshops and training webinars and have advisors on the ground speaking with clients daily. We have around 700 small business clients in Northern NSW alone – from Coffs Harbour to Tweed Heads, check out their training here
Managing Valued Customers, Vaccinated versus Unvaccinated…the challenge ahead
With vaccination rates as at 30/9/2021, at 62.9% in NSW and around 40% in northern NSW, many businesses are looking to open up to customers in a COVID safe way. Many business owners are nervous about the future. We are also asking the question, as are many business owners, retailers and operators in the tourism and hospitality sectors in particular. How do we manage clients and customers, the vaccinated versus unvaccinated? Outlined below are some points to be considered, with some quotes included from an article by Melissa Cunningham and Aisha Dow, www.smh.com.au 28/8/2021.
It may seem like science fiction now but in the United States and Britain, some COVID-19-conscious businesses already have screening requirements, and it’s become a prerequisite to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test before attending a gathering. Over the past month, this discussion has been taking place in the Australian media and the wider community, from the Prime Minister down.
So, while we can want and expect many of our old freedoms to return next year, 2022, they will come with new realities, such as mask-wearing and asking people to “comply with the following COVID health and safety rules”. And when we do meet this virus, many of us, even if we are fully vaccinated, as Ellie and I are, could still end up sick for three or so days with a mild illness much like the common cold but, as infectious disease physician Professor Peter Collignon says, “that is far better than ending up in intensive care for three weeks”.
There is now widespread recognition that a high rate of vaccinations, while essential, will not be enough to allow Australians to live as freely as we could otherwise, or to avoid thousands of deaths. This has been highlighted by international experiences, including those of Israel, Britain and the United States.
Spikes in cases and deaths are largely the result of COVID-19 meeting naive immune systems in the millions who remain unvaccinated. The danger has also been spelled out by the Doherty Institute, which estimated the substantial gap between beginning to open up at 70 per cent of the population fully vaccinated with “partial” versus “optimal” public health measures.
Like countries across the world, Australians who are vaccinated will have far more freedoms than others and infectious diseases expert Robert Booy, says some businesses may even ban those who are unvaccinated. “Businesses will make their own decision and say, ‘we don’t want you in here spreading infection. We don’t want our staff getting sick’,” Professor Booy said.
“The times have changed. People don’t want to deal with having people who are coughing and spluttering. Businesses will make their own choices about how they operate and the government will back them up.”
However, there is an ethical dilemma about when to decide that everyone has had equal opportunity to access a vaccine and to let the virus wash in. Professor Booy suggests an appropriate milestone would be when we reach 80 per cent vaccination because people would have had “months and months” to secure a vaccine. In Sydney, this will be towards the end of October.
But other experts worry that even at that 80 per cent threshold, at-risk Australians who face barriers to healthcare might fall through the cracks.
While some of Sydney’s local government areas have reached single-dose vaccination rates of more than 90 per cent, others areas including Byron Bay, Mullumbimby and Brunswick Heads have just cracked 60 per cent.
While countries have experienced waves of the virus in the young and unvaccinated, Nancy Baxter of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health is less concerned about young people being infected and more worried about those who are unable to be vaccinated because they are immuno-compromised. Young people in Australia had shown a lot of enthusiasm to be vaccinated, Professor Baxter said. “But people with medical reasons for not being able to be vaccinated have been completely left out of the decisions about when we open up.
“Delta will seek out and find the unvaccinated. It will find that 20 per cent.” While hospitalisation in unvaccinated people still occurred, death remained exceedingly rare in people who had been fully immunised, Professor Baxter said.
“It’s been really phenomenal the success that vaccines have had in preventing death, but we know that the vaccinated can still transmit.”
Professor Blakely says the Australian government could go one of three ways. It could take the New Zealand approach to eliminate every outbreak. Or it could bite the bullet, as both NSW and Victorian governments are now acknowledging, let the virus run through society and infect people as fast as the health services will tolerate. The third and most likely scenario would be to enforce enough restrictions to limit cases to something like 1000 infections per day and keep hospitalisations low.
Every major pandemic in global history has fundamentally changed society, says epidemiologist James McCaw, whose team has been providing modelling to the federal government throughout this one. “And this pandemic is the biggest we’ve seen since 1918 in terms of its devastation. It’s going to change the world.”
So the question is, when we consider the issues above, how are business owners, managers and operators across the NSW northern rivers, going to manage the ‘valued customer’ whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated, who want to access your business? Let the debate begin.
NEW CLIENT UPDATE
SHOUTOUT TO OUR EXISTING CLIENTS!
Juni Ross from Clay Social
https://www.claysocial.com.au/
Stephanie May from Eco & Basics
Ben Lewis from Hemp everything:
FAST INSIGHT FACTS
Selling Smarter, Not Harder
The term ‘consultative selling’ first appeared in the 1970’s book Consultative Selling by Mack Hanan. It describes a selling technique in which the salesperson acts as an expert consultant for their prospect, asking questions to determine the prospect’s needs and then using that information to select the best product or service for those needs… ideally, the salesperson’s own.
Taking the consultative selling approach, you must first examine your sales territory by reviewing customers, analysing target accounts, determining how much an account is worth and learning how to prepare sales objectives. The sales objective method is based upon strategic sales planning and professional selling tactics.
This includes:
- territorial examinations,
- customer reviews,
- account analysis,
- worth/value of time,
- writing sales objectives,
- translating account needs and objectives into a plan of action.
A Major Account Plan would include;
- data on the target company along with specific major sales objectives,
- the date to accomplish the objective,
- the person affecting the buying decision,
- the anticipated obstacles, and
- the plan sub-objective steps with dates that are necessary to achieve the major objective.
Why Objectives?
- To know where you’re headed…
- For self-evaluation…
- To strengthen salesperson-manager communication…
- For allocating rewards based on performance…
- To make the most of available time…
Planning the Sales Call Methodology
For implementing the strategy it makes sense to understand the personality and objectives of the person affecting the buying decision before beginning the sales process.
When you hope to gain the favourable attention of another person, consider stating your intention upfront. The more direct you are in stating your intention, the more likely you will be able to experience an authentic conversation where each party shares what’s important to them.
To ‘sell’ your idea, product or service, you must pass the ACID test:
A. Gain favourable Attention,
C. Inspire Confidence,
I. Build Interest to where,
D. Desire surfaces.
When ‘desire’ surfaces, the prospective buyer takes the lead in the conversation, while you provide the evidence necessary to justify the transaction.
Prior to the Sales Call
The salesperson needs to plan for the sales interaction.
She or he must write down the “sales call objective” and their conversational strategy (what they plan to ask, show and tell the prospect). Also, it is important to list the anticipated obstacles that might come up and what the salesperson’s response will be to each obstacle.
Writing these preparations down on a 3 x 5 or, 4 x 6 card will help the sales person remember to review the plan prior to the start of the sales conversation.
As stated previously, understand your own personality and that of the prospective buyer; as well as the personalities of others who may be influential in the decision-making process. Learn how to adapt to different buying styles and secure a commitment.
Reference: Mack Hanan: Consultative Selling: ‘The Hanan Formula for High-Margin Sales at High Levels’
DID YOU KNOW?
Women wanted
Source: My Business magazine, 11/10/2021
In a bid to support and encourage female entrepreneurship in Australia, women who currently own and lead businesses are being asked to share their experiences.
The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman has released a survey aimed at identifying any unique challenges and opportunities faced by women who own and lead businesses.
The findings will be used to consider how we can create the best possible environment for women to start, grow and run a business in Australia.
Bruce Billson said that more than 97% of the women-owned and led businesses in Australia are small businesses.
“Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy,” Mr Billson said. “Research has found that boosting the number of women entrepreneurs could contribute between $71 billion and $135 billion to the Australian economy and up to $7 trillion globally.”
“I encourage women business owners and operators to complete this survey so we can harness opportunities and look at how to address any needless headwinds or obstacles to their success.”
The confidential survey is open until 19 October 2021. It can be accessed by visiting the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman website at www.asbfeo.gov.au or directly at WOWL survey.