Learn how to scale your business in 5 REAL steps powered by

The guide is not an easy 5 step ‘how-to’ process that adds a lot of vanilla flavouring to reality.

What it does is breaks down the essentials to scale your business, in 5 real steps.

Who should read this guide? If you think big or want to think big and struggling with the approach, this

guide is for you. If you are looking for a 5 easy step guide that will make you millions overnight, then this

certainly is not for you. If you have a “conquer the world” attitude within the market you are acting in,

then read on.

1. Understand your value offering

Many businesses understand and know what they do. I do financial services. I do legal services. I do

flower arrangements. I do software development. Very few businesses understand why their customer’s

buy from them. Some think that what seals a deal is price. Price is the deciding factor. Others may think

it is due to an existing relationship. They have always bought from us. We know the company very well.

I have been to the CEO’s daughter’s birthday party.

What happens after you ask the question, “Why do our customer’s buy from us?” is often that a different

story that emerges. This story is the first step and the foundation to scaling your business.

You see, pricing is never a reason why they would buy. Neither are relationships. Value and value alone

is why any business or individual will fork out their hard earned cash to acquire whatever you are selling.

After all, no one will buy something that is of no value to them.

Your customer’s story and explanation of this value is the story you have to know in great detail. It may

mention price and referral value, but it needs to discuss returned value. The value they are getting. In

order to do this, we need to understand a few basic principles.

Many websites and bloggers will discuss the importance of targeting a problem

and offering a solution and this is true when starting up a new business. Though

many times, what you do and sell changes over a period of time and therefore

so does the problem being solved. Many companies Tain and Able have spoken

to have done what they do for so long that the real value or understanding of

problem has been distorted or stripped from their previous market validation.

Remember, a pivot or change in direction will imply a change in value.

Understanding the exact problem or challenge your customer is facing is an

important step in understanding what your customer must have.

Understanding this problem needs to be done before you throw any marketing

at that person. Otherwise, not only will such marketing be wasted, as it is

unlikely to convert, the impact may be a lot worse as it may be misunderstood.

A problem can always be measured. The measure is not associated with the

cost to deliver the problem but is the direct correlation between the problem

and the value delivered if that problem is solved.

To give an example, if you run a software support service for an online retail

store, and a client of yours calls you saying that there is a challenge with their

payment process. It may take your support technician thirty minutes to fix,

though the value of that fix for a busy ecommerce site is a lot more than your

30 minute rate to get the job done.

The measure of this problem is the direct relation to two factors: Urgency and Price.

Urgency

Urgency is a crucial element when evaluating which of your customer’s or market’s problem you should

solve. If your customer has a problem that is not urgent, any problem that is urgent will always take

precedence. The end result may be a lot of interest with little actual sales.

The opposite of this is obvious. I need something now because the problem is huge. It is costing me a lot

of time, money or/and stress and needs to get solved. I will click the buy now button.

What

problem are

you solving

for your

customer?

Can this

problem be

measured?

Price

This is an obvious one. The measure of the problem is directly related to how much you can charge your

customer and still get appreciation for your service. To continue with the previous recruitment service

company, it is a given that the latter problem, that of having to recruit quickly to meet a client’s demands,

may charge more. More is at risk, more value is given, and therefore more may be charged.

2. Productize that value

Any company, no matter its function or scale, has the ability to productize. Even a freelancer or self-

employed techie can go through this process. Most people struggle to understand this when they offer

a service or time linked pricing structure yet it is vital to go down this route should you want to scale.

Let’s give an example.

Recruitment is a great challenge for many companies. Finding, selecting and recruiting talent and

personalities that fit within your business is not an easy challenge.

Now, let us say that there is a company growing at a pace of one employee a quarter. Certainly there is a

challenge, though it can only be classified as easily managed and therefore of low to medium priority.

On the other side of the coin, a small company with some 50 employees, all maxed out, wins a huge project

requiring another 10 staff. The new recruits need to be top notch candidates and this project is likely to be

a milestone for the company. Same problem, different measure.

A recruitment agency, offering recruitment services, needs to understand why their customers are using

their services. Are they used in order for them to develop a slow and steady trickle of quality candidates

or are they ensuring that their customer base can support their own scaling challenges by having a quick

to employ lead time service. No answer is the correct answer. It all depends which problem you are

choosing to solve.

Productization is essentially the converting of what was previously a non-product, into a product, by

giving what is being done to your customers (also known as the ‘how’ of your business) structure in order

for it to be easier to sell, scale, reduce reliance on employee know how and deliver focused growth.

In simple terms, the equity value or business value is measured by its ability to add repeatable value to

an accessed market. Repeatable means that what you do is a process or a series of steps that achieves

the same or similar outcome. This process is therefore your core value as it delivers the solution to a

problem in a structured manner with a semi rigid output. Tweaking and improving upon it will improve

the value delivered.

That process, which ideally is well documented and described, is your core product. Its skeleton can be

your IP (Intellectual Property). It is detached from your employees, your company owner, or even your

clients. It is a black box such that when a job is thrown into this process, it comes out the other end with

specific added value.

To give a relevant example, let’s talk services Let us say you own or work within a software development company or possibly a freelancer. You do not

have a fixed, boxed product that you sell. You simply make software upon a request by a client.

Your year would typically sound a bit like this.

You work for a few weeks or months on a project, deliver what is scheduled to deliver, and right after that

project you are jobless or project-less and panicking to get your next gig. Yes, you have gained some

experience and credibility, got paid for your time but you are still left with little else. After a project is

complete, you are at stage zero and need to find your next client.

This is a daunting experience. It puts strains on sales, marketing, human resources, and every stakeholder

within the business. It is inefficient, with the company being forced not to run at 100% productivity because

you need to allow for projects ending and starting at different times of the year.

The result of all this work, stress and worry is that the value (in relation to its contribution to equity value)

of your year is equal to the amount of projects you sold in that year. No more. Possibly less.

This is product. Understanding what the structure of your product is, what the components are and how

it adds value is a crucial element. You, the owner or the employee, are just a technician that runs it. Yes,

you have to be technical, but it is the process that is the product.

To productize is therefore the process of understanding what you do, developing whatever you do to

give it structure and process, and convert it into a scalable deliverable.

True, variations of this may exist. A variation of process-based product are aspects that would fall under

structural elements of what you do, rather than the process itself.

At this point, I expect techies and engineers to, at best, politely disagree.

If I develop a piece of software which manages your cash on the ForEx market and automatically moves

it around to increase the opportunity of making revenue, that has IP. But where is the value of that IP. Is

it in the lines of code written in a computer language which will be outdated in a few years? Or is it the

logic and process of how you brought together the financial markets and my revenue to make me more

money?

Granted, lawyers may argue differently, but this paper is about selling to customers not lawyers!

3. Develop a wrapper

Let’s face it, we all judge books by its cover. The chocolate in the brown wrapper may be an excellent

chocolate but we all want pick up the one that’s stands out and screams “pick me” from the shelf.

When we say develop a wrapper, we are obviously not talking about foil for chocolate, or even packaging.

We are talking about adding to your product the necessary elements in order to help it sell and scale.

This will most definitely include a price, branding, other elements that make it recognisable, and

marketable, but more importantly, it needs to be done with purpose.

Before applying a wrapper, think about your product as having a blank canvas. It can be anything you

want it to be, or more accurately, for anyone you want it to be. What you need to ask yourself is who

will want it most, how many will want it and how easy is it to obtain these customers. Once that has been

defined, we can then design a wrapper for them. And specifically for them.

To break this down, let’s discuss the following questions:

Who will want it most?

The last word of the question is the most important one. Most. Who will want the product enough to

buy it before anyone else has tested it? You should be thinking of the famous graph that shows early

innovators, early adopters, the masses and then the laggards. To those that did not do marketing in

school, it looks like the below graph.

What the graph says is that a product’s customer type varies according to the length at which the product

has been on the market.

Every product goes through the cycle. It is not defined by your product whatsoever. It is about human

instincts. Some people want the latest gadget, others will wait.

The most important element or cross section of the graph is surprising.

Most companies will develop the following:

A mass product, to be mass produced, to be sold to the Early majority and Late majority. The reasoning

is that there are a lot more people under that part of the curve, therefore more sales, profits, etc.

However, it is not the majority that is interesting.

The early innovators do. And they care a lot. So much so, they will be willing to give you their money for

your product. Yes, they are out there. Finding them though is crucial. In order to find them you need to

know who they are. Those are the customer’s that want your product the most.

“The majority do not care about you

or your product.”

An obvious answer often wrongly answered. How many customers will buy the

product? If you are selling recruitment, the answer is not the total number of

companies that recruit. The question is, how many early adopters will want

your product? What is that number? If that number is low or unjustifiable, what

about the early adopters or those that will buy a Version 2 of your product?

Customers are not born equal. Some customers play hard to get because they

hang around with the cool ones in the play yard. Other are easy. Let us take the

financial industry. Although you would rarely see the word accountant and cool

mixed together, you would certainly see them as playing hard to get.

By studying and, most importantly, speaking with your early innovators, or

adaptors, you should get an understanding of how reachable they are. Can they

be called on the phone? Will they answer an email? If you use online marketing,

is it niche enough to be quickly effective or are you competing within a huge

market.

The above all needs to be assessed when building a wrapper for your product because a wrapper is what

makes your niche or target market notice that, not only does the product apply to them, it was made for

just them.

This will mean that anything that has been added over and above your core product, or IP, is tailored to

make this target market want more of it or simply want it more. This wrapper or structural elements of

your product is a very important step in creating suitability for your target market.

How many

will want it?

How easy is

it to obtain

your

customers?

Does a wrapper make your product?

A wrapper can be seen as the face, hands, arms and legs with the product being the brain attuned to

solving a particular set of problems. If one had to break down the most important aspects of what the

wrapper delivers, it would be appropriateness and confidence for a specific market.

Let’s give an example Let’s talk about a woman who makes flower arrangements. Her core product or IP is that she is able to

create flowers that are a centre piece and that can last a long time. This IP is a process of treating the

flowers and being selective with what she can use in order to achieve this result. Her productization

process has allowed her to recognise that three to four star hotels and other catering establishments would

be ideal clients as it delivers a low maintenance solution to the problem of having flowers looking fresh in

the lobby.

Now for the wrapper.

She needs to add a price to her product. Knowing that hotels in her area are cyclical, and many charge very

different rates depending on the time of year she looks to mirror the hotel structure for her pricing. She

therefore develops four distinct offerings for each of the four seasons, with each season’s price reflective

on how busy the hotel is and the type of clientele. Moreover, she ensures that the branding of the hotel

will be incorporated into the arrangement in some way.

The wrapper or structure of her product therefore includes the pricing relative to season and the

incorporation of branding in her arrangements.

True, the above only includes specific elements of a wrapper rather than a complete picture, but clearly

demonstrates how pricing is not simply a ‘cost-plus-profit’ but an element in your product wrapper, as are

several others that require consideration.

A wrapper delivers two highly related yet distinct advantages:

Market appropriateness

A wrapper delivers market appropriateness by being suitable for a particular market. Your customer

wants to feel that this product is designed for his industry or purpose. The features, branding, supporting

services, marketing, pricing and all the other elements need to be appropriate to the target market in

order for the market fit to be reinforced.

The importance of market appropriateness can be seen in the software

industry, particularly within the SME. Over the last few months, several

entrepreneurs, many with no IT background, have started developing hyper

niche software solutions. Their key function may be a simple scheduler or

photo repository, but with a few frills in functionality and clever product

wrapping, the result is a purpose built purpose built. The shift is from general

systems to hyper specific. To give an example, a grooming sand boutique spa management software that

includes a dog CRM with a picture of the animal to allow your team to remember the dog’s name is a

hyper niche solution. I very much doubt that Microsoft will be releasing a competing version.

The main point to remember is that the core functionality of a CRM system for a dog spa is most likely to

be very similar to that of a human one, which most certainly exists. The difference however was that a

wrapper was created I order to make it market appropriate.

Market confidence

When you wrap a product to make it focus on your niche, your business automatically becomes more

focused, as you and your team become more focused. As you think niche, your vertical expertise and

customer knowledge is enhanced greatly. You understand your customers, react accordingly, and

sharpen your confidence, in terms of both marketing and sales. This leads to a shorter lead time to

getting real momentum.

In order to assess market readiness, or the impact that a product wrapper has

on your product, envisage a sales meeting with a new prospect in the online

fashion business. You are sitting in front of each other at the client’s office and

he asks what you do (Yes I know, not the best strategy for a sales meeting). You introduce your company

How is this

happening

today?

Example:

as a software development company with several skill sets that are suitable to ecommerce. Weak? Yes,

you will be very lucky to win any business. But the lesson here is understanding the questions that would

be thrown at you should the client need such a service. The first thing you need to prove is credibility.

Who are your clients? Have you worked in eCommerce? Can you name drop? An element of being

challenged is almost asked for.

On the other hand, you could have answered the software company in a better light because you had a

product wrapper.

“We help ecommerce businesses acquire and satisfy more customers by improving their online

experience. This is done by focusing on …”

Not only does the second statement or pitch show value, rather than service or skill set approach, when

selling, it is wrapped in that it clearly demonstrates your target customer’s potential problem and its’ fit

against your product. Therefore it displays confidence in its ability to solve it.

4. Develop a channel

The sales channel is probably the one that is mostly ignored by entrepreneurs and business owners.

Typically, a sales channel will be an amount of sales calls a week which will lead to meetings, leading to

proposals, et voila. Furthermore, this approach is typically owned by the founder or owner of the

business. The problem with the sales approach, though can be effective in the short to medium term, is

that it is hard to scale and is too reliant on a single individual.

Sales channels is are the foundation that builds clients. This foundation needs to employ or work in a

scalable fashion that can be measured.

You guessed it. This is where marketing comes in. And by marketing I do not mean adverts in your local

papers or magazines. I mean marketing where its effectiveness can be measured and tweaked in order

to continuously improve its performance. Otherwise, if marketing was not measured, how would you

know whether to repeat?

A great challenge in mental shift is with the entrepreneur that believes marketing is about continual

awareness. Unless your brand has the same stature as Coca Cola or Heinz, such awareness campaigns

might as well be throwing money away. Marketing function needs to be to either generate customers or

to retain customers. Any other objective is a waste of time, especially in the sub € 5 million turnover.

This is where digital marketing could play a good lending hand. Digital marketing allows you to create a

constant flow of traffic, whether they are window shopping and not ready to buy, or cash in hand

prospects. Digital marketing is certainly worth exploring, though is out of scope for the purpose of this

paper.

5. Support

When we think of support, most of us imagine waiting on hold for some guy to give me lip service,

Support is not meant as customer support. Support means understanding your customer’s problems and

business and supporting them. This means refining your product. This means adding new services. This

means innovating for your customers. This means being the number one supplier to your customer’s,

not because you beat the competition, as that’s too dangerous, but because you add so much value, you

are the rock star supplier.

Supporting of an industry or a problem is what

leads to innovation within a company.

Why? Look at it like this. You have innovated, whether in a small or big way, by developing a product

based around a problem. That problem is likely to have many facets, angles and interpretations. Creating

an industry support structure as part of your core functions, which means more than product support,

will lead to a focus of solving these problems. This focus will mean cyclical and iterative innovation that

is sought after and planned for.

Support is having an open discussion with your customers in order to get honest feedback about your

product, your service, your approach and engagement, and the value you are giving. It is also the

discussions with your customers about other areas of their business that you could help them with. It is

the getting your hands dirty and reaching out to speak with your clients.

Remember, the purpose of all of this is to grow; to become a going concern within your industry, with

new customers and products.

Support is the process by which this is done as it is the driver of innovation.

The above 5 steps work. It is a matter of applying

them to your business.

Tain and Able are providers of coaching services, productization strategy services and digital marketing

managed services. A product acceleration company, Tain and Able’s offering delivers real growth, efficiently.

www.tainandable.com