Why Building a Great Business Takes Time

With the lightning fast rise of companies like Facebook and Instagram, it’s easy to feel disheartened about the growth of your own business.

 

Many entrepreneurs feel that compared to the sky rocketing internet companies featured on the covers of business magazines that they are failures.

 

But the statistics show otherwise.

 

The reality is that most successful companies are built over time. A long time.

 

Take Walmart for example.

 

Today Walmart is of course the world’s biggest retailer, with 8500 stores. It is the third most valuable company in the world. It employs over 2.1 million people.

 

But things weren’t always so rosy.

 

When Sam Walton started Walmart in 1945 business was slow. In fact it was 7 years before he even built his second store. His period of hyper growth didn’t even begin until 1970, 25 years later!

It’s important to remember that in business slow growth at first is the norm, not the exception.

It takes time to work out what customers want. What your brand positioning should be. How to train staff to maximise sales. How to market effectively.

 

And it’s only when you get each of these elements fine tuned that you can ever hope to build a fast growth company. You hardly ever get them right first, second or even third time.

 

The problem is that the media loves to herald the comparatively rare super growth companies,thereby giving the impression that this is normal and even expected for businesses.

But the best way to describe the process by which a business usually grows is ‘Failing forward’. A ton of mistakes, then a little progress.

 

It’s not pretty, it’s often not even enjoyable, but you get there in the end.

Now when I emphasise the need for a re-set of expectations, I’m not suggesting you work in a slow, leisurely manner. Not at all.

 

Harvard professor John Kotter has shown the absolute importance of a business leader working with urgency and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

 

Here’s the paradox; you have to work intensely, trying to make things happen fast, yet simultaneously remember that true business success usually takes a long time.

 

You must be in a rush in the short term, but only expect to achieve greatness in the long term.

As the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar put it, “Hasten slowly.”
 

-- Siimon Reynolds

 

A Brilliant Way To Create Demand For Your Products

I was at a pool party on the weekend and heard a fascinating story.

I was speaking to a highly successful Beverly Hills property developer and he was telling me about a startling experience he had in Paris.

He loves watches and decided to visit the main store of Patek Phillipe, the eminent watch maker. As you’d expect, there was a extensive array of watches, most priced around the five to ten grand mark.
Then suddenly he saw something that stopped him in his tracks.

There, glistening in a glass case was a watch with a price tag of one million dollars.I kid you not, they sell a million dollar watch.

But even more amazing was this: he said in order to buy this watch you must write to the CEO of Patek Phillipe and tell him why you deserve it!

Can you believe that? They have the gall to charge a million for a watch and then you have to pass a test to see if you you are worthy of it? Amazing.

And brilliant marketing.

By making you apply to buy the watch they change their position in the sales relationship. They move from someone hoping for a sale to someone in charge. They also make the watch seem even more desirable – it is for for those who are exemplary in not one but two ways:

They are extremely financially successful and also a true connoisseur of time pieces.

They also dramatically reduce the chances of the buyer asking for a discount. The buyer is just hoping to be accepted.

Furthermore, and very importantly, even if they never sell this watch, they have positioned ALL of the other watches in the store as good value by comparison. And positioned Patek Phillipe even more strongly at the top of the brand exclusivity ladder.

Wow. That is truly great marketing.

Now I’m not of course suggesting that you charge a million dollars for your product (unless you feel you can get away with it of course).

But I do ask you to have a think about how you could do something similar.

Consider how you could both create a premium priced product and make people fill out an application to buy it.

Make them prove they are worthy of your product, make it seem only for a select few, the deserving handful who appreciate it’s extraordinary value.

It may seem paradoxical, but making it hard to buy a product very often increases the customer’s desire for it.

We all want what we can’t have.

Conversely, if you look too eager to sell something, the customer usually doesn’t want to buy it.
Masters of business are very aware of this conundrum and therefore think very carefully about both their pricing and the availability of their goods.

They don’t just sell. They make people want to buy.

- Siimon Reynolds