Q: I want to sell my business when I retire, and right now, I want to make it ready for buyers. The business is doing about 8–10% a year, and I’d like to take it to 50%. I want to be predatory in my approach. How do I my make my business huge before I retire?

A:

• Invest in infrastructure by growing your business’s digital backbone, employing the right staff, and featuring your products in a way that makes them easy to sell. Then focus on attracting more people to purchase through devising a marketing strategy.
• Understand the dynamics of your category. How long are businesses incorporated for before they start selling? Is it a growing industry category or is it a category that’s stifling? Is there future growth potential — and if there isn’t, what can you do to ensure you offer potential buyers future growth in your business?
• Find out what you can do that other businesses can’t, and leverage it. This is called Predatory Marketing — finding the weakness in your competitor’s greatest strength. An example of this in play is McDonald’s and Burger King. McDonald’s is famous for producing the same great-tasting burgers regardless of location — their greatest strength is consistency. Burger King’s campaign, “have it your way”, exploits the weakness in consistency through allowing for customisable burgers.
• Strategise how you can best communicate your brand message. The distinctive look and feel of your products, the tone and language you use in communicating your brand, should effectively reflect your brand’s personality and should carry through every email, every document, every touch point you have with your customers in person and online.
• Take a look at your database and work out how you can maximise your touch points with them so you’re staying top-of-mind. Perhaps you can send your customers a series of autoresponders or a customised product after they’ve made a certain amount of purchases.
• Provide rational justifications for why customers should choose you.
• Make one signature product that’s so remarkable that it makes buyers think that if this product is so great, then all your other products must be great too. 

Featured Strategists

About Stump the Strategist

• Questions from the floor, answered live in nine minutes
• It’s opinion, not advice
• Step Change charges clients for advice — Stump the Strategist is free

PS: Know more about building your brand’s personality — read about the how age-old archetypes power today’s most memorable brands