Communications Revolution is About to Happen

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The communications device market is about to enter a revolutionary stage. Samsung is singing the blues and Apple is falling flat on their latest devices.

Not that each doesn't make really cool little devices, they just happen to be in a more mature phase of the product life cycle. Too much competition will slow sales and lower profit margins. There's no way around it.

For Apple, this was an opportunity. But post Jobs, is there a "next best thing" in the labs? The good news is that a couple of kids in a garage are working on the next big thing. And it won't be an incremental enhancement that ships form that garage. It will be amazing, a device that most of us haven't thought of or couldn't. Alternately, those kids might have access to a university lab and are implanting chips in unfortunate rats or clipping on earrings that talk to their brains. Or maybe a little of both is going on from here to Romania. Maybe Samsung or Apple will notice and make an acquisition. Either way, we all win and the economy restarts... until the tax man stalls it again.

10 tips for Making Small Talk and Networking

Your business, especially if it's a consulting business, is totally dependent on your personal skills. If you're a likable person, you're way ahead of the game. Unfortunately, even the nicest and most interesting folks in the game are terrible at socializing in business events. Here are some rules I've developed over my 30 years of consulting.

1. Don't sell anything unless asked to. You're there to socialize and sell folks on how nice, clean, well-mannered and interesting you are. If you pass this test, you'll be asked what you do and maybe, later, asked for a more formal pitch. So save the elevator pitch until after you've impressed them with swell-ness and are asked for it.

2. For heaven's sake, don't play the totally cool thing and show up in shorts and a t-shirt. That may go very well with some, but for others, it's a deal breaker. Don't risk it. No one ever said they'd rather not call the well-dressed, manicured and neat guy or gal.

3. Turn off the cell phone and put the damned thing away. You're not in middle school, you're there to socialize. Picking up a cell phone and texting or reading a text pretty much tells the person you're talking to that what you have in your palm is more important than they are.

4. Do ask everyone what they do, where they live or anything else that can create a connection or some common ground upon which conversation can be built. Compliment a watch or tie. It might have a story attached.

5. Be honest and humble. If you're there alone and see someone else standing alone, march right over and introduce yourself. Start with something like, "I saw you standing alone, as I was, and thought I should introduce myself." If you're nervous in that kind of setting, tell them. They'll warm right up.

6. Make it easy to be found. Have plenty of business cards to hand out.

7. Dress in business attire - See items #2 and #7. Check a mirror before leaving the house/office and every time you hit the restroom.

8. Offer to help anyone you can with no expectations of returns. They will come.

Revenue Projection

When developing a pro forma, revenue projections are critical. Investors will look here first to determine if the business has merit and if the entrepreneur knows the market. After all, this is why they invest, to get that revenue. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs I've met believe this figure is mostly guess work and many simply use industry growth rates for their projections. As a specialty of mine, I'd like to offer some pointers using an example.

1. Never rely solely on market performance. This number is an industry average and doesn't reflect those lean, hard, and almost always unprofitable first few years of many individual companies within that average.

 2. Do use performance records from individual companies that are most like yours. If you're selling a new soft drink, don't use coca-coal as a comparable. Look for a startup like yours and justify how your business is like that one based on location, market segment, marketing and business strategy.

 3. Get that information. If the business has gone public, their financial performance is public record. But chances are it won't be. Your closest competitor is probably a privately run company with performance records safely stored in hidden cabinets locked in hidden rooms on uncharted Islands. Here's where it gets fun. Pull out your spy glass and go full Sherlock on these guys. Here's an example for one I pulled:

A company that paces interns with companies became a media darling recently, partly because it is run by two very smart, young, and attractive females. And as such they were interviewed regularly on business and non-business related network programs. The founders, of course, took full advantage of the spotlight to highlight their business success. I read and viewed every interview they gave and was able to plot several dates at which the founders claimed they had doubled their revenue. A final interview revealed revenue in hard numbers for a specific date. I was able to use the doubling dates to work backwards from the hard number to create a revenue profile for their full three years of business. The figures worked forward and backwards indicating they were telling the truth. I was able to use this profile to estimate revenue growth in terms of percentage for a client in a similar business.

Industry analysis is important to understand. How your competitors fared is even more important for projecting revenue.

Strategic Learning Tool from Chris Fox

Discovered this really cool strategy development tool from UK based Strategy Business Consultant Chris Fox. It's a nifty little plug in the data and the tool generates the proper graphics. His blog has a lot of articles about what to do with the data you've generated.

 It's a great tool to have handy when moving through the Entrepreneurial Sequence chart.

Chris and I are both part of the Strategy Consultants Community on google+. If you're a business or marketing strategy consultant, join us there for discussion.