MARKETING STRATEGIES: Your vision

Your next opportunity to convey who you are and what you do is your vision/mission. We might all argue about the meaning of each but essentially this is the major statement of who you are and what you do. It should be the response to the question, “What do you do?” Lets call this the vision for sake of discussion.

The vision is your opportunity to convey who you are, what you do and who your target customer is in a few sentences.

I have spent endless hours over many years with hundreds of entrepreneurs working on their vision statement. Why? Generally because they are really bad at putting a succinct statement together which conveys, in non-technical terms, what they do. But, when you think about it – this is the key message. I don’t want you to dump on me for an hour telling me what you do. I want to make a quick decision whether to spend more time with you. I want to know quickly – are you likely to be able to solve my problem or not? If not, let me move on and find someone who can.

This may seem a little brutal but this is how it works. Try standing on an exhibition stand for a few days and watch what happens. The successful stands have a way of quickly conveying what they do and for whom. They spend their time with the right prospects and don’t waste their time with those passing individuals where they can’t offer a good solution.

On an exhibition stand the most frequent question you will get is “What do you do?” You have, at best, about 20 seconds to give an answer before they decide to stay or move on. You need to have a very crisp message to ensure you capture the best prospects and turn away those who would waste your time.

Of course, the information of who you are, what you do and who you do it for should be prominently displayed. With good signage, the person who stops and asks question is already somewhat qualified.

So it all comes back to name, tag and vision. With these three elements of communication you need to establish credibility in the eyes of the potential customer.

Tom McKaskill is a successful global serial entrepreneur, educator and author who is a world acknowledged authority on exit strategies and the former Richard Pratt Professor of Entrepreneurship, Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. A series of free eBooks for entrepreneurs and angel and VC investors can be found at his site here.