14 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
This gentleman is certainly right about one thing . . . he is old-fashioned!
Let me be absolutely blunt. Regardless of size or sector, if you are not
promoting yourself, your business or building relationships, using social
online media such as LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, then you are missing
out on potential business and allowing your competitors to get a differen-
tial advantage over you.
We will be taking a look later on in the book at the potential benets of
online social media opportunities for business development, with some
practical tips about what you should be doing. (See Chapter 7 for more on
how to use the online world for business development.)
13. Test your ideas, concepts and prices
A very dynamic, and ambitious, ‘would be’ entrepreneur explained to me recently
how he got his ngers burnt with what he thought was a project that would make
his fortune.
Because he had access to a specialised database, he decided he would send out
glossy colour mailshots to all 20,000 names on the list at a price he had a positive
‘gut feel’ about.
Actually, he sold just nine of his products at £19 and made a huge loss on the project.
The moral of this story in business development terms is simple. He didn’t
test the demand for the product in the market place; he didn’t test the
quality of his database; he didn’t test the effectiveness of his marketing
copy; nor did he test his price point. Come to think of it, he didn’t test
anything at all or do any meaningful planning.
With big numbers lustfully rolling around in his head, he impatiently
blasted out what he thought would work to his entire 20,000 database.
Had he taken his time, he could have ‘split tested’, sending different copy
at different price points to a small but signicant percentage of his data-
base. He would have almost certainly identied whether there was a market
for his product, which copy was best and at what price. Had he discovered
at this stage that nobody wanted his stuff at any price at all, he could have
quit before losing quite as much as he did.
Business is not, as some think, about taking wild risks. It is about making
sensible and sound judgements based on information that is usually avail-
able. Test as much as you can, so you have as much information as possible.
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