 |
|
BUSINESS IN THE BLACK
Business Plan, Where Are You?
by David Rambeau
Every place you go, every agency or agent you encounter, you’re constantly advised to develop a business plan. And while business plans are, on the face of it, important, there are necessary sub-texts that are regularly overlooked. This probably happened to you, repeated admonitions from consultants, colleagues or instructors to devise a plan, but no sub-text, no follow-up, no consultation.You know this happened to you, if you have a business plan at all. Do you?
I’m asking, “Do you have a business plan?” Let’s assume you do. Where is it? Think for a minute. In your desk? No, it’s not there. In your file cabinet, where it dreams of the attention you once gave it, and the time, effort and money you spent on it? Buried under a stack of old records that you also haven’t reviewed in a month of Sundays?
Maybe, but which stack?Do you remember where you put it, when you last read it, when you last discussed it with your business consultant? You should know where it is. It’s not hard to know, really it isn’t.If you have only one copy, like you do, you’ll lose it, forget where you put it, never look at it, never implement it. You know you will.
Here’s what you should do. You should have three copies. That’s right, three copies___ minimum. Your business plan is your war strategy. Business is, for the most part, non-violent war, you against the world, especially in this period of globalization. Focus up…somebody else out there in the marketplace wants every customer you have or may have, wants every disposal dollar in their pocket, not in yours.
You’re already short on capital, equipment, allies, research, interns and workers. The least you can do is have a surfeit of plans to refer to. In this analysis and consultation (that’s what I do when I’m not producing television shows) I’m advising you to tape your business plan where I have taped mine___ on the wall beside the cabinet over the sink in the bathroom in your home. Not only can’t I not lose it, having it there provides me with the opportunity to read it every morning.
My second business plan is taped to a shelf in my home office. My third plan is at my studio. These may not be locations you would choose for your three copies. No problem. Pick three walls or shelves and tape a synopsis of your business plan to sites you see every day. Then, in addition, put three more detailed copies in handy places where you may forget them.This consultation will cost you $100.
Please bring your payment to my office which is located at 8904 Woodward at Holbrook, suite 302. And we can talk some more about your business and expand upon this basic instruction. Please phone me at 313-871-3333 for your appointment.
Or check out my website: projectbait.blakgold.net.Failing that, or, in addition to that, I suggest, as a token of your appreciation that you purchase a business card sized ad in this publication. If ten readers respond, the editor of this publication might see fit to continue my business writing career.
Let me close with this aphorism. Black is beautiful, but business is business.
-30-
David Rambeau is a writer and producer of For My People, the television program.
For more information, please access his website: projectbait.blakgold.net. Or call 313-871-3333.
You Just Don't Want To Do It
by David Rambeau
There are many aspects of business you know you just don't want to do___the books, record-keeping, inventory, advertising, and the main one, selling. You know you just don't want to sell your product or service, the one you invest your time and resources in, the one you claim is yours to make your fame and fortune.
And because you don't want to do it, or like to do it, you don't do it. And so, your business doesn't make money because you won't sell your service or product. Plain and simple, you don't sell, and as a consequence you don't make money, certainly not the money you have the potential to earn. You may take orders, that is, if someone walks up to you and asks to buy something from you, but you don't sell anything to anybody.
Most of the business people I run into don't even like to talk about their business much less sell it. They'd rather talk politics or history,sports or religion, anything but their business and how you should buy something from them. So they/you don't do it.
You also don't want to study selling so you'll learn how to do it. If you won't practice selling, and you won't study selling, how will you ever learn how to sell anything?
My goal is to read one book on selling every 4 months. Not a lot by any stretch of the imagination. But it's tough to read one book on something you're not really interested in when you can read erotic novels or watch television or talk on the telephone to friends. So how many books did you read on selling last year? And how many do you plan to read this year? Is that in your business plan, reading books on selling? If you could get a trip to the Caribbean for each book on selling you read last year, how many trips would you qualify for? Zero, zip, nada.
Every chain bookstore sells books on selling. They have shelves full of them. You can buy them for about $20 each. They're all good. Each writer comes from a slightly different perspective, but they all apply some important sales principles. You can learn a lot from all of them, but first you have to read them, and then you have to put what you read into practice.
Another part of the sales aspect of your business is having business cards, having the tools of your profession. We do interviews of people in business, (not employees, but owners of the business) for our cable television program, ''Business In The Black''. Before or after the interview, I'll ask the business owner for their business card. I'll need their business card for my card file, for my email address directory, in order to contact them to sell them our service or product. You know, half the time they don't have any cards with them. Or, they give all kinds of excuses why they don't have their business cards. Their cards are being printed; they left them in the car; they forgot to put them in their purse or wallet. Sometimes they'll have one last card in their wallet and they'll take it out to give to me, then they'll say, ''Oh, I can't give you this card, I have some phone numbers on the back of it I really need. I'll bring one to you.'' Right, sure.
The business card is just one tool in your sales plan, your sales tool kit. The sales books you read on a regular basis are just tools in your sales plan, your sales took kit. There are more sales tools you need, including me, your sales mentor, someone who can push you to sell, focus you on the necessity to sell 24-7-365, to everybody you come in contact with. To sell them something. If not your service or product, someone else's. You're always selling. Selling is the name of the game.
-30-
David Rambeau is a television producer of the program, ''Business In The Black'' for Project BAIT. He can be reached at 313-871-3333. Or access his website: projectbait.blakgold.net. That's projectbait.blakgold.net.
-----------------------------------------
The Organizing Committee of the Detroit
International Black Theater Conference And Festival
will hold its bi-weekly session Saturdays, at 2 p.m. at the
Beans & Bytes Coffeehouse 4200 Woodward @ Willis,
in Detroit, Mi. For More Information: 313-871-3333.
Or projectbait.blakgold.net.
|
Business In The Black
Airs daily on Detroit Cable Ch. 68, the public access channel, Ch. 33 UHF and Ch. 72 the Detroit cable lease access channel with our host: Joe Williams with Arthur Cobb, producer.
Business In The Black is sponsored in part by: Project BAIT Video Production, the Historic Little Rock Baptist Church, the Institute for Media Studies, Electronic Services Technologies, Wake Up Detroit!, Cole Financial Services, the Detroit Presbytery, the Friends of BAIT (FOB) and You.
For more information call us at: 313-871-3333, davidrambeau@hotmail.com or Joe Williams, 341-1821.
Business In The Black, aired on metro Detroit's Ch. 33 UHF station and Ch.72, has six (6) minutes of commercial spot time available for potential advertisers who want to reach an urban adult consumer market. A 30-second spot costs $25 each, while a 60-second spot costs $50 each.
Businesses might want an interview segment instead of a commercial spot. Our infomercial segments run about 10 minutes and cost $100 each. Two segments are available in each show.
Business In The Black also airs twice weekly on Oakland County cable channels in metro Detroit on. For more information, please contact: Joe Williams, the program's host, at (313) 341-1821. That's 341-1821. Or Will Amos, our Oakland County distributor - 313-207-4680.
Business In The Black is looking for owners of local, urban businesses to interview on our program about the business process including: their business plan, sales, marketing, advertising, capitalization, customer service, book-keeping, continuing business education and their own experiences while in business.
We tape on Saturday mornings from 10 a.m. till 1 p.m. at our third floor studio located at 8904 Woodward, #302 just south of 9000 Woodward, Little Rock Baptist Church, which is across the street from Northern High School.
For more info contact: Joe Williams, our host, 313- 341-1821 or our studio: 313-871-3333.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Detroit - New Orleans Connection
by David Rambeau
Everyone wants to expand their business. If you're doing business in Detroit or Michigan, both of which have declining populations, high unemployment and a shrinking core industry, U. S. auto companies, you need to consider exapnding your sales into other urban areas.
We in Project BAIT are always giving a thought to how we can enter other urban markets with our media products, our television shows, For My People, Business In The Black and Thedamu presents...., and with our latest project, the Urban Theater Journal.
The problem is having a business contact on the ground, in the city we want to expand into, having someone we can trust, that is, someone we've known for years, having someone who is receptive to our proposals, having someone we can realize a benefit for their business even as they provide opportunity for us, and having someone who knows how to communicate via the telephone and the Internet.
As you can see those are difficult criteria to satisfy,which probably explains why we have found it difficult to expand into other markets. If you use a similar set of expansion criteria, you've run into the same challenges we have.
Recently however, an old colleague of ours now in business in New Orleans got in touch with us to renew our acquaintance. In the course of discussion it turned out that she had recently gone into business, so I immediately knew there was a potential opportunity for mutual benefit and development.
I replied to her overture and began to communicate by email. First, I made suggestions and provided an Interenet service to help her business go online. After on-going communications over the phone and the Interenet, it became clear to me that we could help each other even though we were hundreds of miles apart. An on-going development process between our two businesses has been started.
At this stage we're exchanging information rather than products. At the next stage we'll need to exchange and market products and promotion. Stage 2 will be critical to our mutual development.
But to develop our process even further and to plan for the future, we need to outreach to other Detroit and New Orleans businesses who have products and promotion that we can present through our respective businesses in Detroit and in New Orleans. In other words, if you're not growing you're standing still, or going backwards. This will be Stage 3.
So I'm reaching out to the readers of this article and their contacts in business. If you have a business, particularly a product, that you think could be distributed or sold and promoted in New Orleans and Detroit through Project BAIT and our contact in New Orleans, please contact us at 313-871-3333.
You will need an email address as well as a telephone so we can reach you; you will need to be conscious of the Internet even if you don't have a web-site. We can facilitate your presence online at projectbait.blakgold.net as part of the project.
And finally, you must be ready to make a deal. To expand into another market is a complicated, long-term process; it will take time, energy, marketing and a business plan. If you're interested, let's explore the possibilities.
-30-
PS: We're also looking for free-lance writers for our publication, the Urban Theater Journal. Writers will need a resume' and some examples of writing skills. Contact Project BAIT 313-871-3333 or projectbait.blakgold.net at your earliest convenience.
|
|
|
