Archive for the ‘Tips & Advice’ Category
Don’t sell me features!
Nagi Salloum | September 2, 2010 – 12:16 pm |
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I want to emphasize the importance of selling benefits, not features. Every business owner, marketing professional, or sales person needs to realize that their customers buy benefits, not features (although features can influence their purchasing decision and would act as the Reason To Believe or commonly known as RTB in the advertising lexicon).
To understand what I mean, go to an electronics store, to the computer section specifically, and observe the laundry list of specifications they put next to each laptop displayed. 
It’s strange that although the laptop is a device for the masses, store owners still show a whole list of features and technical specs that only an experienced person or a computer engineer can understand. It is only when you translate these list of features into benefits that you are able to understand what they mean and consequently more likely to purchase the products.
Think of your advertising campaigns. Are you selling features or the benefits?
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What do Bruce Lee, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble have in common?
Nagi Salloum | August 30, 2010 – 10:42 am | View Comments
The topic of today is about brand/product distribution, an often neglected but nevertheless crucial element for the success of your business.
Bruce Lee, the cultural icon, acted in 20 films by the time he was 18. However his acting career really took off 13 years later, in 1971, in his first real leading role in the Big Boss, which catapulted him to stardom. His iconic figure was essentially created in just 2 years, between 1971 and 1973 when he teamed up with Golden Harvest, a dominating production and distribution company based in Hong Kong.
Microsoft’s dominance in the software industry is essentially attributed to the deal with IBM in 1980 which awarded Microsoft a contract to provide the DOS operating system in the IBM PC computers. Due to that partnership, Microsoft benefited from a massively distributed product to market (and sell) its software.
What I learned from a taxi driver
Nagi Salloum | August 29, 2010 – 11:44 am | View Comments
The original title of this post was “are you suffering from paralysis-by-analysis” because that’s the topic I am going to talk about.
Paralysis-by-analysis (also known as analysis paralysis) is when you can’t take any action because you’re over thinking the details, over analyzing or over planning.
Yesterday morning, I called up a taxi at 5 AM to go to the airport. I was greeted with a big smile by this young energetic Pakistani taxi driver. I asked him about the reason for his cheerful mood. Filled with enthusiasm, he started telling me about his life story and how he struggled to get where he is. He took pride telling me how he pulled himself out of total poverty by taking many small jobs. He emphasized that as a poor young man, he could not afford to have a lot of time to think or over analyze his next move. While he would try to do a benefits/risks analysis, he mostly followed his gut feel to proceed to the next best job. His secret, he said, was this:
“Something is better than nothing, because nothing is nothing. It’s important to do something.”
Is social media marketing overrated?
Nagi Salloum | August 26, 2010 – 9:51 am | View Comments
There has been a lot of buzz lately about social media marketing (SMM), its impact on business, and the feeling of necessity for companies to have a social-media-marketing-strategy. So I wanted to share my opinion and raise some important questions. First, social media is not Facebook or Twitter. It’s way more than this. But considering we want to limit to most popular tools Twitter, Facebook and Blogging, I still fail to see the impact of SMM on real business measures. Here is my rationale. I will give the case for UAE, representing Arabia.
Twitter: How many Twitter users are there in UAE (the most connected country in Arabia with 76% internet penetration)? 40,000? How many of those are active? 20,000? (If you know specific figures, please let me know). UAE has 3,777,900 internet users. So, with a super successful Twitter campaign, the maximum number of users any business can attract is only 0.5% of internet users. Pretty small number, no?
Facebook: I will not refer to Facebook ads reach, because advertising is not marketing. How many fans did the biggest Facebook campaign attract in UAE? How many of those fans were active? The numbers I have seen were close to 30,000 of active fans (I cannot disclose the campaign for confidentiality purposes). Again, it’s a pretty small number, no?
What I learnt from Sylvester Stallone
Nagi Salloum | August 25, 2010 – 9:30 am | View Comments
There’s more depth to Sylvester Stallone’s story than what the movies that he starred in would let you think.
He finally realized it wasn’t working, he changed his approach, he decided to start writing. He wrote a bunch of screenplays, but still, rejection after rejection, he kept trying until he sold 1 screenplay for 100$ (Paradise Alley that was shot a few years later). He kept going. At that time, he barely had 50$ on him. He was so broke he couldn’t even feed his dog anymore. He went to a liquor store and sold his dog for 25$. He was so attached to his dog that he went out of the liquor store and wept like a kid. It was the lowest point of his life.
Get off your chair and start selling!
Nagi Salloum | August 24, 2010 – 10:04 am | View Comments
Whether you started your business because you have a particular skill, a certain passion or out of frustration from your 8-5 job, you need to be constantly wearing the salesman hat; Why? simply because the lack of cash will kill your business. Cash is the oxygen to your business, once you run out of it, you run out of business. And constant selling is one of the best way to secure the cash.
As a founder, a business owner or a business partner, your job is to constantly secure enough cash for your business. Business won’t show up to your door. Users will not turn into $$ with a magic wand. People do not care about you. So get off you chair, go out and sell.
Put a target to meet 10 prospects, 20, even 50 per month. It’s a numbers game, out of 10 prospects, maybe 1 will become a customer (so 10% acquisition rate), maybe 2, or 5. You will only know by trying. And the good news is, your acquisition rate will eventually get higher with proper focus, constant learning, and practice.
Protect your revenue base with the long tail strategy
Nagi Salloum | August 23, 2010 – 11:16 am | View Comments
In short and simple terms, the long tail strategy consists of selling a huge number of items in relatively small quantities. Items can be products or services. Quantities can also refer to prices.
As an example, Amazon.com and Netflix.com generate most of their revenue by selling a huge variety of products that are in low demand or have low sales volume. Google makes most of its advertising revenue not from large advertisers, but from the hundreds of thousands of small advertisers.
The importance of laser beam focus
Nagi Salloum | August 22, 2010 – 11:14 am | View Comments
I can’t stress enough the importance of business focus. Lack of focus can literally make or break your business, especially as a young fragile startup, with limited resources. It is very important to focus on your core strength, on your unique selling proposition, on a specific feature set, on your specific target audience, core product… whatever it is, just focus all your energy on that one thing and become the best at it.
When laying out the business model, and the financial forecast, it is easy to assume that out of all your potential customer base, you will get x% and project some monthly revenue numbers around them. However, when it comes to starting up a business, although focusing on revenue is a great thing, it is still not focused enough.
Consider focusing more by asking: which target audience is it best to focus on? which sector or industry? which product will you sell? Once you identify your target audience, sector and product, my tip is to go even a level deeper: Focus on getting 1 customer first, just 1 customer. Focus all your efforts, resources on getting that first customer. Hustle, follow up and do anything to close that first deal. Then, and only then, move on and focus on getting the 2nd customer, then 5 customers, then 10 and so on…
What is your exit strategy?
Nagi Salloum | August 21, 2010 – 11:12 am | View Comments
As a startup founder of www.loomni.com, I wonder what are the possible exits for my company in the future? It’s a topic I think every founder should really think of. How many other Maktoobs can we really have in the region? It took 10+ years for the exit to happen. And it was a foreign company who acquired an Arabic company. I think it is a bit sad to see that the biggest web acquisition in the region was a foreign acquisition.
Although it was a really awesome story deal for the Maktoob team, it was great to place Arabia on the world map, It gives hope to young founders, but should the biggest web acquisition in Arabia, sized at around $175M (I do not have the accurate figure) – a relative average deal based on US standards – worry Arab founders? Did the Yahoo-Maktoob deal set a valuation ceiling for future acquisitions? Can local Arabic companies hope to exit their companies for higher valuation deals?
The other questions would be, who are the potential acquirers of web startups? Should founders rely on foreign corporations for their exit strategies? Can startup founders hope for any big exits from within the MENA region?
I wonder…
What Is The Best Business Advice You’ve Ever Received?
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 21, 2009 – 9:18 am | View Comments
I thought it was about time to do another crowd-sourced post experiment where I throw a question out there on social networks, try to gather different people’s feedback and bits and pieces of their shared wisdom, and then share it with everyone here.
The question I asked this time was: What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?
And the replies I got were very interesting ones, both on Twitter and Facebook.
From Twitter (in reply to this):
- Do what you want to do, complete your goals and don’t compare yourself to the others. (Saud Al-Hawawi)
- Never get into the gold rush business, get into the business of servicing the gold rush business. (Bin Mugahid)
- Don’t shit where you eat. (Kay)
- Partnership due diligence. Be very selective with who you partner with. (Mohamed)
- If you are selling something people don’t need, you are invisible – Seth Godin (Osama A. Dwairi)
- Always be prepared to leave. (Tareq Abedrabbo)
- Give more than half your business to somebody else. (Bin Mugahid)
- Nobody really cares about your grades in school. This is ain’t school boy. (Bin Mugahid)
- Business is connections; the more you have the more your business will be successful. (Rami Khader)
- If u have your full time job, look for branding, marketshare & influence of your project & don’t look for money (Tarek Kassar)
- Do one thing at a time. Focus, Focus, Focus (Tariq Al Asiri)
- In life, you should never wait to receive blows to deal some. (Mehdi Lamloum)
- Learn to delegate. (Houeida Anouar)
- Be an innovator and a leader. (Mehdi Ladjemi)
- A freelancer should know that the brand is the product, the product is the company and the company is him. (Aniss Bouraba)
- If you have no work to show, find a charity that needs your service, or do free work for friends or family. (Aniss Bouraba)
- Listen. (Khalil)
