Maverick Strategy.com

How the Maverick way differs from others

 Zeroing in on the customers who need your help. When I started the Maverick Marketing consulting company over a quarter century ago, most consultants targeted the Fortune 500 behemoths. Obviously, those consultants got larger fees from the big guys.

Yet, the remaining 22,333,500 “LESS than Fortune 500” smaller companies have always stood in greatest need. I decided to go where the need was.

I have not been sorry.

Along the way, I discovered not all – but almost all – small businesses should approach advertising differently in several respects from the national-level product advertising practiced on Madison Avenue.

How local business differs
from national

In the first place, rarely do small independent companies have money to test advertising. They usually can’t run a test because this afternoon they’ll be offering their products in that very same market.

Maverick’s years of testing individual media and advertising methods help fill that gap for our clients. We’ve tested various media combinations and sales approaches for 186 different categories of business.

With all that experience, we can predict quite accurately what will work and what will not. Saves lots of wasted dollars.

In the second place, a local business usually sells a host of products – plus it also needs to sell the benefits of the company itself – all at the very same time. National level advertising normally concentrates on a single product only.

The local business emphasis led me to develop three unique approaches to help managers conceptualize their business and communicate with prospects and customers.

I needed a way to “view” a business and came up with . . .

Three new approaches

One. The Maverick five-part Value Package concept helps you visualize all the parts of your business. You can see immediately the selling process encompasses far more than simply selling products for a price.

Customers buy much more than a product from you. In making their choice, they actually buy the whole idea of your business along with your product.

They consider all they know (and don’t know) about you in the Value Package components. Your products, your pricing structure, your merchandising and display, and your sales and service methods.

For instance, your product and price may be acceptable. But, if you display it badly, customers may pass it by. If product, pricing and merchandising are okay, but your sales or service people fail, you still lose.

When your customer buys a can of deck paint, he doesn’t want the paint.

He wants a beautiful deck on which he can entertain himself and friends. If your people can’t offer the know-how to get that beautiful deck, the sales component of your company’s Value Package fails.

The last part of the Value Package concept focuses on the communi-cation you send to your market. How do you convey the information a prospect needs to know about your business so your customer can make an informed decision?

Two. This problem led me to develop a way to design ads I call Benefit Sell.

This method relates closer to tested professional selling rules than to faddish “creative” advertising. Creative advertising can turn into a “hit-and-miss-crapshoot” when you try to bring real dollars in the door.

Effective salespeople use professional selling rules to give structured sales presentations that educate prospects, reveal benefits to customers and induce them to make purchasing decisions naturally.

“Creative” advertising usually relies on ploys to get prospects’ attention, entertain them and end with people marveling at the cleverness of your ads.

Unfortunately, these tactics often fail even though a few such ads get “raves” from both critics and the public. Everybody loves your ad but nobody buys!

You can study the components of Benefit Sell at the end of the chapter entitled Keep It Simple. We know it works. Most of our clients grow at least twice as fast as the average business in their category and 15% to 50% yearly growth patterns are the norm.

Three. Small businesses should plan and budget differently than national organizations. Big companies may channel some dollars into unproductive types of advertising and promotion without doing too much damage to their overall effort.

However, since small business ad dollars are always sparse, every one must hit right on target with no waste.

The sad truth is local-level organizations seldom use any real plans or budgets to focus their goals and control expenses. That means they waste their dollars even more profligately than the big guys.

Such waste can hasten the outright demise of your smaller business. To remedy such failure, small companies need an affordable tool for planning.

We created such a plan (It only took several thousand hours.)

Planning and budgeting to make
some money . . . for once

Over the last quarter century, my associates and I custom-designed more than 3,100 marketing strategies and plans for companies from coast to coast.

We take pains to budget them conservatively.

I’ve always practiced conservative budgeting, probably because I cut my teeth in the Midwest, a bastion of conservative thinking. I strive to protect clients from “betting the farm.”

When these managers budget advertising correctly, sales often exceed projections. Yet, our self-correcting plans help protect them so they suffer far less if their strategy happens to miss the mark.

We budget based on a tested formula.

Upon studying Model Operating Reports (MORs) for different business categories, you quickly see each expense has to fall within a certain percentage range so it balances with other line items. (That’s accountant talk for “Don’t throw your money around”.)

Example: In the clothing industry, if your store’s rent factor exceeds about 8% of sales, your company usually skates on the edge of collapse.

Advertising expenditure, too, must range within a certain amount. If your ad budget is too high, you fritter away money to the ad media. If your budget is too low, the money you do spend can’t put enough pressure on the market to create new customers.

This book illustrates some Maverick philosophies, strategies and specific methods that increase sales yet save money in your marketing.

It’s a new world out there.

Having worked with such a wide range of businesses, I’ve learned a bit about what motivates people. I want to pass it on.

You will need it (and everything else you can get) to sell the coming generations.

Our kids and their kids are getting smarter with each new crop. (The latest research shows their IQ scores range 20 points higher than generations before them.)

I look on those children with awe. In our family, six-year-old Paul was pounding (literally) on his parents’ computer keyboard at eighteen months. He’s surrounded with tools you and I could not conceive at that age.

Sixteen-year-old Nathan already commands skills and manipulates concepts with a deftness that exceeds my poor comprehension.

So it is with eighty percent of the children in our country. To you, dear reader, falls the challenge of conducting commerce with the little buggers.

Get ready.

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