Think to succeed

LEADERS AND WORDS. If there is one word that irritates speaker, trainer and strategic advisor Vincent Fournier, it is the term “Mr. and Mrs. Everyone”.

The author of the book Boost your business hear it all too often from the mouths of entrepreneurs who explain who their product or service is for.

“That’s the worst answer you can get. Why ? Because “Mr. and Mrs. All-the-World”, it does not exist, “he writes in his book. According to him, this expression means not having a target clientele, which prevents you from positioning yourself well, “because trying to want to talk to everyone, you end up not talking to anyone”.

Here is one of the advice he gives in his book, which he does not consider as a recipe to follow, but rather as a strategic guide.

“We must take off the nose of operations,” he said in a telephone interview. By thinking more strategically, we can accelerate our business. When we are a lot in operations, we take measures based on what is happening now. But we will then make decisions that are too emotional or rational that do not serve our objectives.

The customer at the heart of its priorities

The book is divided into five pillars. The most central is the customer pillar. “If the customer is not at the heart of our priorities, there is no business”, simply summarizes the author in an interview. Nevertheless, he considers that this foundation remains too neglected. In addition to poorly targeting his target clientele, the entrepreneur often does not know them. The creation of a database to gather basic information (age, place of residence, gender, etc.) on its customers is therefore essential.

“I have been working in the business world for more than 30 years, a third of which as an entrepreneur, and I would tell you that the advice I would have liked to have had earlier in my career is this: find your ideal client,” he wrote. It thus adheres to Pareto’s law, which stipulates that 20% of customers represent 80% of turnover. This therefore means that some of them must be prioritized. Vincent Fournier believes that SMEs can increase their revenues by 30% by simply defining who they really want to talk to.

define yourself well

In order to find your ideal client, you must first know who you are as a company. It is in the management pillar that this crucial step is taken. Vincent Fournier quotes the American management expert Peter Drucker: “The most important reason for frustration and failure in companies comes from an insufficient reflection of the raison d’être of the company, or its mission.”

To develop his business vision, he asserts that it must be precise in time; optimistic, but realistic; measurable; motivating and inspiring; and explicit.

After this stage, which constitutes the foundations of the house, as well as that concerning the customer, the author proposes the pillar of attraction, that is to say the one where the consumer must be attracted. He warns against the temptation to focus on the sale, rather than the relationship with the customer. Why ? Because consumption by utility has become the exception. “The one I now call the “consumer-actor” consumes for pleasure, for affiliation or even for compensation. He wants to live an experience and be an integral part of the buying process.” Therefore, the marketing approach must take this into account.

The last two pillars are operations and administration. For the first, it is a question of transforming its potential customers into ambassadors of your products and services. It is to maintain an impeccable customer relationship. For the last pillar, the objective is to better define and achieve its objectives, which means ensuring close monitoring and properly measuring its results. “A GPS without a final destination is useless,” says Vincent Fournier. With this book, the author hopes that the entrepreneur or self-employed worker will have a more global vision, which will allow him to be more efficient. Therefore, he invites her to work more ON her business rather than IN her business.

Boost your business is published by Béliveau Éditeur.