Developing the Enterprise Pledge

A few years ago when the business support industry was going through yet another shake up I got to thinking; how could we deliver our support in an environment where there was no money to pay for it?

This is a theme that has cropped up time and time again over the years. The most straightforward solution is to ask the client to pay for the service, it’s a fairly simple payment for services transaction. This never sat comfortably with me.

The nature of our client base means that many people never start up in business, often they come to us simply to explore an idea, to get a different perspective, to find out if they can get any financial assistance or sometimes because they feel that self employment is the only route available to them in the current market. To my mind it was wrong to ask people who can’t afford to pay to pay for services that they aren’t sure they need, we’re there to help inspire people, to develop their skills and to help them start businesses that wouldn’t happen otherwise, I’m not interested in business support which merely counts that would happen anyway.

We need an alternative, if the public sector can’t pay for business support and the client can’t either then who does?

This is what sparked the idea of the Enterprise Pledge. I was reading Linchpin by Seth Godin:

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? How to drive your career and create a remarkable future

In the book Seth refers to the giving culture in Native Americans, that the most influential person in the tribe was the person who gave the most away. This got me thinking; we’ve always given our service away, and in many ways this could be interpreted as a gift.

What if we asked for a gift in return?

So the concept of the Enterprise Pledge was born,.

Next Post: How The Enterprise Pledge Works

Idea x Delivery = Results

Ideas on their own are worth very little. I’ve seen some fantastic business ideas yield very little in terms of success simply because the business owners focus was firmly on the idea. Conversely I’ve seen some fantastic businesses grow from middle of the road ideas because the business owners focus on delivery.

Doing something fantastic badly is much more less likely to bring results than doing something dull fantastically well.

Don’t get hung up on your idea it doesn’t need to be a world beater.

Concentrate on your execution because that is where your real value lies.

Do you have an idea for a business to improve your community?

suehowe:

image

Then UnLtd could be the place to start!

UnLtd is the leading provider of support to social entrepreneurs in the UK and offers support to hundreds of individuals each year through its Awards programme.

It offers of complete package of resources – from funding, to ongoing advice, networking, training and a practical support.

Sound interesting?    Have a look at the website and find out more. 

Innovation in Giving Fund Application.

We filmed our Innovation in Giving Fund Application today in MILE House. The idea is to use the fund to build the Enterprise Pledge platform which will enable us to support more of the businesses that we work with.

It’s a bit cheap and cheerful but hopefully gets the message across!

Why we hate sales.

It occurred to me very recently that we have a problem in our business, and this problem is something I’ve encountered time and time again - it just took a while for me to recognise it so close to home - we hate sales.

This was a bit of a revelation to me and also presented a bit of a problem, we’re a business, we’re a social enterprise admittedly but we are most definitely a business and the number one thing a business needs to do is to sell. We know this. The thing is we are very good at what we do. I know this because our clients tell us so, pretty much daily.

We perform well on our contracts, exceptionally well in fact but when we fail is when we need to “sell” (or convert). My theory about this is that it’s about mindset. We have always effectively given our service away completely free of charge to the client, it was a take it or leave it deal, if you need our help we’ll help you in any way you can if you don’t engage - no problem - you probably didn’t need us anyway… You can see the problem; if all businesses engaged their customers like this then there wouldn’t be too many businesses out there.

We know times are changing, for better or worse the one constant is change and to survive in this “new world” our mindset needs to change. We need to embrace our business, we need to embrace our offer and we need to embrace sales.

I know we’re not alone in this it’s weirdly a pretty common trait among businesses, particularly at the start up stage. It’s the question of being worthy, of feeling like you’re bothering people and the fear of rejection. If you never ask someone to buy, engage or otherwise receive your offer then you never risk the dreaded “No”.

The thing is once you’ve received a few “No’s” or because most people are so nice “I’m really sorry but I can’t…” you realise that you didn’t die, it wasn’t even that painful, you didn’t make a fool of yourself, you didn’t ruin your business and in actual fact you got some decent feedback and learned a few things. So you do it again, and again, and again and soon it doesn’t feel like sales, it doesn’t really even feel like work, it feels like talking passionately about the thing you love to do and make awesome offers to people who could benefit from them - because that is exactly what it is.

So we don’t really hate sales after all, we just hate the fear of rejection, and we hate the fear of failure. Ironically, it is ultimately the fear of failure that leads us to fail.

Sooner or later we all need to take the leap into the unknown and to recognise that without selling, no matter how great our product or service is, we simply don’t have a business.