Tag Archives: entrepreneur

Who is your target customer?

How to identify your target customer? You must choose which type of customers you want to serve. Wishing to help everyone is a mistake, just like it would be to cover all the needs in your customer segment, or trying to imitate every new idea. Many companies are living a “herding behavior,” following the leader´s steps and comfortable in vulgarity.

Reflect on which customer segment your company has the more potential to create a unique offer that covers a type of unattended need. Once discovered, be willing to renounce on the other types of customers that don´t have such a need for that service.

Insurance company Progressive discovered a poorly-served collective. Those with alcohol abuse or risk behavior history had great difficulty in being accepted by insurance companies. They tackled this collective, which had few alternatives, and which, in turn, allowed them to charge higher premiums. Thanks to their ability to handle information, they were able to identify segments within this collection that didn’t pose such risk, like drivers with drinking history but also parents with small kids. 

To add real value, you must step in the customers´ shoes and understand their behavior. Try to understand the psychological reasons behind their purchases. You must feel how they feel. Don’t project your feelings to the market. Think about their concerns, needs, preferences, thoughts, hopes, relationships, and daily routines. For this, it’s essential to see them in action:

  • How are your customers?
  • What are their personalities like?
  • Whom do they identify with?
  • What are their hopes?
  • How do they see themselves?

Try to think as customers do. Don’t focus only on the features of the product or service, but on the benefit to the customers, on how they perceive it, on the psychological value. What do customers really value? What touches their core?

Customers buy solutions

See your customers as strategic assets and innovate around them, not around your products or services. Instead of thinking about the product used by the customers, think about the problems they have to address. Customers don´t buy a drill, they buy a hole. They don´t buy a service, but a solution.

It requires empathy to understand the feelings of a type of user and their frustrations. That’s why many business models have been born out of users’ frustrations.

Dropbox Case Study

Dropbox is an example. It was founded in April 2007 by Drew Houston, a 27-year-old man. The idea came to him while on a bus when he realized he had forgotten his pen drive. He decided to program service for synchronizing and sharing files between computers on the Internet. This way, he could always have access to the latest version of documents.

Every job has a functional, emotional, and social dimension.  You must decide who will and who won’t be your customers. Ask yourself: ç

  • Who are my direct customers?
  • Who are my final customers?
  • What issues do they have?
  • What can I do to address these issues?
  • How do these customers use existing products to satisfy their needs?
  • What can make me different in a way that makes these customers interested?

Making customers your fans 

After knowing who is your target customer, you have to make them your fans, you must give an overabundance of the feature they value the most. Focus your efforts on attracting and engaging fans – those who can be most interested and most loyal. They will help you spread the message among their peers. Turn them into your army. 

It´s about closing the space between problem and solution, between what is and what could be, between the existing experience for users and the one they could have. But be careful, you must solve real problems, not ones created by you. 

Maybe you can create a new class of customers that didn´t exist before like FedEx did when they developed a new market for those who wanted their packages to arrive in just one day, guaranteed. 

Net jets found that business travelers had two options in two extremes, either they traveled on a commercial plane, enduring all the discomforts of an airport, or they had a corporate aircraft, with the enormous costs this implied. They understood that there could be a middle-ground formula, allowing executives to rent a private plane whenever they needed it. 

After analyzing what the customers want and your capabilities, you must look at competitors and alternatives to see if there is something that will make you different in the eyes of those customers.

Naturally, the strategy is to satisfy the customer and gain a profit while doing so, that´s why you must ask yourself if the customer is willing to pay the price you have to charge for it to be profitable for the company. Thus, it’s about creating value for your customers and being capable of capturing value for yourself as well.

Next steps after knowing who your target customer is

Knowing who is your target customer is vital, and that is a great first step. Though, you must think that the strategic management of a company has many other areas that business owners must pay attention too as well.

It is about a collective approach towards dominating all the areas of your company through the right strategy, depending on your goals, industry, and many other factors.

Our CEO has written an excellent book that will help you get a glance and overview of how to achieve this. Fill out the quick form and download it today.

Download for free the bestselling book: "FIT: STRATEGY, VALUE, AND PRICE"

Please fill out the form and enjoy the book written by our Chairman, Enrique Quemada.

How to build  a more profitable company through the FIT strategy and may other elements.

Discover the eight elements of the business puzzle, and all they contain, to build a valuable company.

Learn how to execute your strategy and maximize the price of your company as never before.

BOOK


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Entrepreneurs are our heroes

Many entrepreneurs wage daily battles, spend endless sleepless nights, feel misunderstood by their employees and their close ones.

Entrepreneurs are often considered lucky, with many disregarding the financial risks they assume, the continued loneliness they experience, the hard decisions they must take, the emotional struggles, and the general cost of following their passion, knowing that in a moment they can lose it all.

An entrepreneur in his 40’s started having severe panic attacks; he visited a doctor after an attack that forced him to stop his car and walk home. The doctor recommended he take a leave of absence, but his company needed him, and he kept on pushing until the anxiety medication kicked in. He knew this was not sustainable, so he hired us to sell the business. We got him a high valuation from a Private Equity that was consolidating the space, and he was able to walk away after the closing with enough money to retire and not stress anymore.

Employees can get to go home and forget about work, most of his friends go on vacation and don’t have to think about work, but that is not an option for him.

“For an entrepreneur disconnecting is not an option”

He can never forget about work and worries. Decisions are always in his mind; the phone rings all day every day, and emails don’t ever stop, he wants to disconnect and relax, but the reality is that he can’t.

Therefore, it can be one of the different reasons that motivates an entrepreneur to sell a business.

How can entrepreneurs make his effort worth it:

A good strategy is the best friend of an entrepreneur. Knowing how to manage your business will bring you two important things:

  1. Al though worries and work won’t stop at least, the entrepreneur will gain a sense of direction, control, and progress once he manages to dominate all the areas of his company. Resulting in a feeling of satisfaction that will reduce the personal impacts all the sacrifices are causing.
  2. A good strategy leads to higher benefits and value. In other words, it leads to the supreme objective of any entrepreneur: to see their business grow.

If you are in this, you have to go big. Your efforts have to pay out your sacrifices, and your success has to be your relief. Please, download this book written by our Chairman, Enrique Quemada, and learn the whole scope on how to manage your business to success strategically. 

Download for free the bestselling book: “FIT: STRATEGY, VALUE, AND PRICE”

Please fill out the form and enjoy the book written by our Chairman, Enrique Quemada

How to build  a more profitable company through the FIT strategy and may other elements.

Discover the eight elements of the business puzzle, and all they contain, to build a valuable company.

Learn how to execute your strategy and maximize the price of your company as never before.

BOOK


We will keep you informed of the latest news

The role of a Business Owner

It is undeniable that all companies have an impact on the society they perform their activity in. Following this idea, businessmen are then figures of leadership and influence for whom they surround. Therefore, the business owner has a huge responsibility: giving back to society what they have already received from it.

During his professional career, the role of the business owner as a leader is mainly represented by two different aspects:

  • Provide jobs for the rest.
  • Create a positive impact through the execution of his company’s mission.

However, there will come the point where the businessman, for various reasons, won’t be able to keep up with the necessities of his company. It is at this moment when his role must switch to be ready to embrace the extended responsibilities this situation brings.

Now, the primary mission for the business owner should be guaranteeing that the benefits his company brings to society persist through time, even if this means not being the one carrying out this action. In other words, he must find the ideal counterpart for his company, one that can assure the proper execution of the business mission.

Having said that, it is worth mentioning that the key to the selling of a business is the process of finding the best counterpart. The first step, and the most important one, is having the support of the correct advisor to complete this complex journey.

The selling of a business is no easy task, much less something that should be left in hands that are not strictly professional or specialized in the sale of companies.

What to look for when hiring a financial advisor?

Once the business owner decides to sell his company, it is imperative he must be advised appropriately. The search of the ideal buyer is a complicated process that requires extensive experience and specific knowledge. In like manner, each step in the selling process is vital as a mistake can conclude in the total failure of the operation. Hence, it is essential to consider what are the qualities that enable an advisor to guarantee a successful selling.

The advisor or finance boutique must accomplish specific requirements to be considered as the ideal advisor for a possible client. These requirements are the following:

  • A robust and trustworthy confidentiality policy.
  • A transparent and accessible work methodology.
  • An extensive track record of past successful operations.
  • A strong and consolidated network of international partners.

ONEtoONE counts with an international network present in over 15 countries. We have completed over 1,500 mandates and count with a global network of partners that fully trust in us.

If you are a business owner and find yourself in this situation, do not hesitate to contact us. Our team of advisors will take care of your operation to deliver the best results possible.

A dream that came true

A business is a dream that came true. It is the materialization of an idea created from the ambitions, needs and concepts of happiness and success of a person.

It is well known that, for a company to keep on going, it is required extremely high quantities of hard work, time and resources. It is necessary to lose our fear of failure and start learning from it. Not only a strong and decisive character with a well-defined personality is required, but also being a little bit “unconsciousness” to be able to ignore all the risks that can make you back down.

Many would say you have to be a little crazy to take up this challenge without any guarantee. However, businesspeople only need to have one thing clear: a solid “why”.

The “why”: the reason of success

The “why” of a business owner is the reason all those risks seem so small in your eyes. It is the motivation that makes you wake up each morning and work to continue living your dream no matter what is going on in your life.

The “why” transforms itself in the most reliable source for an entrepreneur to create his business. At the same time, the business becomes the most direct way to satisfy the entrepreneur’s “why”.

Let’s see this in an example. In many cases, the reason for a business owner to create a company comes from the need of supporting his family, this reason becomes his “why”. At the same time, his company becomes the main resource to support his family. Through this, a positive tandem between the means and the end is created.

The tandem between the means and the end

When in life the means to get to the end align themselves, something very special, which not everybody can understand, emerges. This is: a life purpose.

Therefore, we can say the business owner, thanks to the combination of his personal interests and the materialization of his project, has been able to give his life a purpose and a direction.

The successful businessman is constantly working to shape and maintain his dream. In other words, he becomes used to living for his company. With a lot of hard work, this will make him enjoy many years of success and prosperity.

But what happens when the finish line of the business owner is crossed? His success reaches such level that the need that fulfilled his “why” ends up disappearing. That is to say that the life purpose of the businessman loses focus, and it is in this moment when the need of an existential change appears.

 

When success becomes redundant

When the “why” loses its value due to success, it is time to start considering new life paths. A dream that came true is the first sign that there is a need to find another mountain to climb.

If the business owner keeps chasing what’s already accomplished, he will fall in the hands of redundancy and inertia. This will only lead to a path full of unhappiness.

Maybe the idea of changing the route of life after so many years and effort is scary. In this case, what needs to be done is to find a new purpose. A new end must be found, one that is backed by a strong “why” and with solid means to achieve it.

A legacy: your new life purpose

Therefore, the objective of the business owner should be to leave a legacy. He understands that we only live once and that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving. It’s about living generously and putting others first. It consists of taking advantage of having been privileged and changing the perspective of the optimal objective of living.

In other words, the entrepreneur must stop working on a dream that came true already and move on from seeking success to finding meaning. He must understand that true happiness is found after the sale of his business.

To move from one purpose to another, the first step is to close a stage of life. This closing begins with the sale of the company. The businessman will be able to concentrate on his new purpose and start the journey to achieve it. If you want to know more about how to sell your company contact us.

selling process of a company